Jennifer Tescher

Jennifer Tescher is the President & CEO for the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which aims to transform the financial services experience in America in order to better serve underbanked consumers and help them achieve prosperity. Towards that goal, CFSI develops and distributes real-world tested research and strategy, provides funding to promising companies, and facilitates cross-sector business collaboration. Ms. Tescher founded CFSI in 2004 and has since achieved notable success in raising the profile of underbanked access and asset-building as an objective for the industry. She has become a nationally known expert on this topic, with a monthly column in American Banker, frequent interviews and articles in the financial press, and major speaking engagements at a broad spectrum of industry and policy convenings. Tescher launched the Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum, produced in partnership with SourceMedia. As the nation's top thought leadership program, addressing high-quality products and services to meet the needs of underserved consumers, the Forum showcases innovators, executives, academics, government, and nonprofit leaders.

Big banks increasingly are developing application programming interfaces to make their customers’ data available to third parties. But discrete deals between banks and third parties would be a bad outcome for consumers and the industry as a whole.

Cards preloaded with unemployment insurance, child support, food stamps and other government benefits can be viewed as potential bank accounts, waiting to be opened by people with the fewest quality opportunities to connect to the financial mainstream.